Ray Ison, Professor in Systems at the UK Open University since 1994, is a member of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group. From 2008-15 he also developed and ran the Systemic Governance Research Program at Monash University, Melbourne. In this blog he reflects on contemporary issues from a systemic perspective.

The pressure on scientists
doing basic research to produce innovative results is undermining
researchers’ credibility, two prominent scientists told a conference in
Brussels last week.

Mathematician Martin Andler, co vice-president of grass-roots
scientists’ group Euroscience, said there was tension between the need
for researchers to do basic, blue-sky research and the requirement for
their work to be innovative and have an impact. He says he is concerned
that researchers feel under pressure to claim their work will have a big
effect when often it is not possible to know whether that will be the
case.

“It’s wrong to force people to lie,” he said, adding that the issue is one of research integrity.Andler
explained that such dishonesty could take two main forms. In one,
researchers flesh out funding applications with details of activities
they have already completed. In the other, they exaggerate the likely
impact of their work to make their research seem more relevant to
funders.Robert Winston, broadcaster, Labour peer and professor of
fertility at Imperial College London, described a phenomenon he calls
“the science delusion”, where scientists approve of their work being
marketed as much more important and influential than is actually the
case. As an example, he cited the mapping of the human genome, which has
not lived up to expectations that it would, for instance, revolutionise
our ability to manage diseases.

“Scientists need to be more
modest,” he said, explaining that two worrying consequences of these
tendencies are that scientists permit their work to be overhyped and
fail to admit that they have emotional biases that can influence their
science.

The comments were made in presentations at SciTech Europe, an event held in Brussels on 22 November."